As always, Le Guin’s worldbuilding is impeccable here. The exploration of what an anarcho-syndicalist society would look like is thorough and realistic; indeed, it is an “ambiguous” utopia as some printings of the book make its subtitle to be. I especially enjoyed how Le Guin manages to capture the psychology of someone who grows up in an anarchist society, illustrated beautifully by Shevek’s horror at the A-Io equivalent of 5th Avenue:
And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession.
Whereas we (or a Soviet!1) would perhaps see the “nightmare street” as a triumph, Shevek recoils at the sight of so much abundance wrested away from its site of production, to be displayed only as a commodity for consumption. Shevek’s horror is that on in Urras, things are made to be sold; in Anarres, things are made to be used.
The psychology of dis-possession among the Anarresti extends not just to material things but also to social relations. Particularly, the nuclear family doesn’t seem to be the primary mode of social organization (e.g. people live in “domiciles” that are basically dormitories; Divlab assignments do not make exceptions to place partners close to each other), though Shevek and Takver do display a great amount of loyalty to each other. It’s not clear if abolishing the family is something that Anarresti wholeheartedly embrace, as many characters lament the difficulty in maintaining ties with partners.
What is most utopic about Anarresti society is their incredible capacity for solidarity. For example, people basically follow Divlab assignments no matter how inconvenient. (Also, Divlab’s global network of job postings seems like a Soviet apparatchnik’s dream bureaucratic tool than an anarchist’s; yet at the same time the postal service is so bad people usually refrain from writing letters!) I think a large part of this solidarity stems from the Odonian mythos, which gives the Anarresti a unified culture, and from the Anarresti’s self-conception as a hardscrabble people who take care of each other despite their hostile environment.
At the same time, Le Guin is able to lob serious criticisms of anarchist society. Particularly, power does not flow through a state in an anarchist society; instead it is channeled through public opinion, which through Shevek’s experience in ostracism Le Guin shows to be capable of being oppressive as well. Of course one might sympathize with the Anarresti would lash out at what Shevek is doing out of fear of the Urrasti; but what about when public opinion turns on someone in manifestly unreasonable ways---say, by being from a different culture, or by being a different race? This is a situation where a state’s capacity to enact coercion is useful: to act as a “referee” among citizens and maintain order by making sure fundamental human rights are not violated. By placing so much premium on freedom and voluntary association, anarchist society does not have a response to minorities experiencing prejudice beyond the consolation that they can always move somewhere else. The Little Rock Five had to be escorted with police so that they can go to school; if midcentury America was like Anarres, schools in the South would still be segregated.
While the worldbuilding and the exploration of anarchism impeccable, the plot is a bit muddled. Shevek basically doesn’t do anything in the odd-numbered chapters covering his journey to Urras and eventual return to Anarres, up until he decides to leave the University, where he somehow immediately gets embroiled in an uprising against the A-Io state. It reminds one of a car stuck in the mud which then, getting traction, shoots off into the distance. The plot also just kind of ends without much resolution: Shevek resolves to abandon working with A-Io after realizing that he was basically jailed in the university, and instead opts to work with the Terrans and the Hainish and come back to Anarres. But the book ends as this shift is just beginning.
Footnotes
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Compare Kruschev’s admiration of America in Red Plenty: “But the Americans got it. Of all the capitalist countries, it was America that hand-most nearly trying to do the same thing as the Soviet Union. They shared the Soviet insight. They understood that whittling and hand-stitching belonged to the past. They understood that if ordinary people were to live the way the kings and merchants of old had lived, what would be required was a new kind of luxury, an ordinary luxury built up from goods turned out by the million so that everybody could have one. And they were so good at it! The bulk fertility of their industry was only the start. They had a kind of genius for lining up the fruitfulness of mass production with people’s desires, so that the factories delivered desire to people in little everyday packages. They were magnificently good at producing things you wanted – either things you knew you wanted, or things you discovered you wanted the moment you knew that they existed. Somehow their managers and designers thought ahead of people’s wants.” ↩